


In Ivy and In Twine

by waltzmatildah



Category: Chicago Fire
Genre: Angst, Drug Use, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-10
Updated: 2012-12-10
Packaged: 2017-11-20 19:37:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/588918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/pseuds/waltzmatildah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first and only time he swallows down a handful of ill-gotten narcotics for a reason other than his injured neck, it is eleven days post-Thanksgiving.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Ivy and In Twine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [citron_presse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/citron_presse/gifts).



__

_And all I knew was steeped in blackened holes…_

 

\---

The first and only time he swallows down a handful of ill-gotten narcotics for a reason other than his injured neck, it is eleven days post-Thanksgiving.

 

 

 

Also; it is, was, _should have been_ , his best friend’s birthday.

 

 

 

He gets a text from Hallie mid-afternoon. 

Reads it:

_Hey, I was just thinking about this time last year, and the beer pong dart that went astray at Andy’s party. I still have a scar on my shin from that! I hope you’re doing okay and that you don’t mind I sent you this._

And then he reads it again.

By the time his shift is drawing to a close she’s still the only person to have acknowledged the significance of the day. Perhaps, he thinks, she is the only one besides him that has remembered.

He reads the message again. Searches the clipped text for the inevitable hidden meaning but can’t seem to figure it out. Usually the subtext is clear when conversations turn to Andy.

_Remember that time you killed your best friend?_

As if he could ever forget.

 

 

 

The apartment is empty when he gets home. A pattern is beginning to develop here. Shay opens her mouth and inhales and gets ready to speak to him as they’re knocking off for the night, and he smirks and raises his eyebrows and turns and walks away from her before she can make a sound.

They have whole conversations in those few stuttered facial expressions and most of it boils down to this:

“Are you ready for help yet?”  
“No.”  
“Then… sorry.”  
“It’s okay. I get it.”

That they don’t actually verbalise anything makes the pretending that much easier.

Well, for the most part.

 

 

 

Anna’s ‘You Owe Me’ note has fluttered to beneath the fridge at some point between now and when he’d desperately unpacked her latest supply. He catches sight of it as he swings the door open in search of beer, and the stark reminder steals his breath in a way that he can’t quite fathom.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact he’s prostituting himself in exchange for prescription pain pills.

But also, maybe not.

He has a headache that reaches to his toes. Like his whole head’s in a vice and someone’s spent the better part of the day steadily tightening the screws. He thinks the desperate fear he had that he’d lose his shit mid-shift and blow the whole facade to shreds hasn’t helped.

It takes effort, he notes.

Living a lie.

And he’s counting down to the moment when it all falls apart.

An inevitable ending of sorts.

 

 

 

The beer, the _beers_ , warm him up. And they work away at the headache until it’s little more than background noise and static, a radio station turned down low. The house is quiet and the shifting of the windows in their frames to protest the strengthening wind is the only sound outside the in and out of his own breath that registers.

He drags his phone from his pocket and opens Hallie’s message again. Reads it until the screen blurs and then scrubs at his eyes and forces himself to read it once more.

 _I hope you’re doing okay_ it says.

He wants to laugh but he doesn’t remember how.

 

 

 

Morose in a way that’s comfortable these days, familiar, he scrolls through past messages in an attempt to chase away the nagging isolation. 

_I have friends_ , he thinks, _see?_

There are messages from Anna. Always from Anna.

_Are you free for lunch?_

‘Lunch’ is a euphemism; she has less than zero interest in catching up. He thinks, that’s okay, neither does he really.

Matt text him once, three weeks ago now. It had said, _You’re late._ Only, without the apostrophe because Matt’s never really cared for being grammatically correct when he’s pissed off. 

Matt’s always pissed off.

 

 

 

If he scrolls back far enough he knows he’ll find texts from Andy. Words and letters and too many random photos of his kids that he can’t bring himself to look at but, equally, knows he’ll never, ever delete.

 

 

 

His right hand clenches suddenly, his bottle of beer lands in his lap and the cold is shocking. His fingers release as quickly as they’d tightened, and he wonders, hysterically, if he’d imagined the whole thing. There’s no shooting pain. None of the mind-numbing agony he’s come to associate with the increasingly frequent spasms.

And when he attempts to shift, to right the still leaking beer before it empties completely, he realises why.

The pain is not the only thing that’s missing.

 

 

 

It’s seventeen minutes before his hand so much as twitches.

 

 

 

His arm comes back to life with a sudden cacophony of pins and needles, and even the slightest movement of the limb makes the room twist and spin dizzily. He makes it to the bathroom in time to vomit, but only just. Flushes away the stale smell of beer before collapsing back to the cold, tiled floor. Rolls onto his back and slings the crook of his left elbow over his eyes and tries not to think too hard about the fact that he wants nothing more than for Shay to come home and find him.

_Please, Shay. I think I’m ready now…_

Another lie.

He drags himself up and struggles into a dry pair of sweatpants. Makes a show of cleaning off the couch before the gravity of the situation finally dawns and it’s all he can do to fucking _breathe_ let alone see enough to properly wield the sponge he’d found.

 

 

 

The silver foil of the pill packet draws his frayed attention like a beacon suddenly. And it doesn’t seem like a stretch, not really. Because, so what if his neck’s not really bothering him right this minute, _every other inch of him is screaming._

He pops out half a dozen or so and lines them up on the counter. Side by side like soldiers. 

The buzzing of his phone interrupts the game he’s playing with himself.

_Will I or won’t I?_

He thinks, Anna.  
He hopes, Shay.  
Or Matt.  
He _wishes_ … Andy.

It’s none of the above. An automated message from the garage telling him his car is due for a service. Or something. 

He hits delete and brings up Hallie’s message again. The rumour mill at the station tells him her on again/off again engagement with Matt is currently off again.

Probably for good this time.

And Anna’s in Ohio for work. And Shay’s ex, Corrinne, she was gone when he woke up and so were her earrings so, he figures she got all she came for in the end.

No strings attached and all that crap.

 

 

 

He texts Hallie back.

A passive aggressive whim…

 

 

 

 _Thanks for remembering,_ he types roughly, fiercely blinking back the tears it feels like he’s been fighting off all day now, _no-one else did. Jury’s still out on your second point but that’s nothing new…_

He hits send, inexplicably aroused as his heartbeat ramps up a notch or several, and thinks… maybe. It makes sense, after all. 

It’s the only thing that ever does.

But he panics then; abject horror swallowing him whole. He switches the phone off and sends it flying across the room, as though destroying the device may just be enough to un-do everything he just did. To take back every thought he just had.

To apologise a thousand ways to Sunday to all the people he just screwed over.

Again.

He presses he heel of his palm against his sternum in a bid to quell the agony in his chest, uses his free hand to scoop up the pain pills and dry swallow the lot.

It takes him two goes.

He gets it done in the end.

 

 

 

He likes the way the pills make everything soupy. His intentions have never been sinister. 

Escape the pain, he thinks.

After all, that’s what they’re for.

Aren’t they?

He can look in the mirror when he’s high. He can look in the mirror and not want to scratch out everything that he sees reflected back.

It makes for a welcome change.

 

 

 

There’s a photo in a frame on a side table they never use. Matt had been the photographer, and it’s him and Andy and Shay and Hallie and Dawson. They’d signed up for Movember, and the girls are sporting fake moustaches in the shot. 

Andy’s hair is spray dyed green because he couldn’t grow a moustache if his life depended on it.

He grins, giddy, and sinks to his knees. He wants to reach beneath the glass and touch the faces in the picture, to test if the skin across their cheeks still feels real and whether his fingers will come away tinged green if he runs them through Andy’s hair.

He doesn’t because he’s not quite _gone_ enough yet not to recognise where desperation ends and absurdity starts. 

Though, he thinks absently, he’s probably getting close. 

 

 

 

There’s a knock at the door then, and a voice calling to him through the hollowed out wood.

“Kelly, are you in there?”

And it’s Hallie…

Well, _fuck_.

 

 

 

He contemplates shoving his fingers down his throat and vomiting the pills back up. But Andy’s wide smile in the photo he’s still staring at tells him the effort would be too little, too late.

 

 

 

He swings the door open expansively. He can feel his face grinning even though he’s not consciously co-ordinating the effort.

“Hallie! Hi!”

His pitch is off. And he keeps missing her face every time he attempts eye contact. He knows he needs to rein his shit in but he can’t seem to put the pieces together enough to actually _do it_.

“Kelly,” she says. Nods. Blinks. “Can I come in?”

He steps back, motions for her to move into the room and uses the seconds where her back is turned to him to _breathe, breathe, breathe._

“You want a beer?” he says, already walking in the direction of the fridge. There’s an open bottle on the kitchen counter that he figures he can pretend to drink from, and several empties next to the sink that might just make for a decent cover story.

“I’m sorry for sending you that message.” He’s rambling, can’t seem to stop now that he’s started. “You didn’t have to come ‘round, but I’m glad you did.”

He holds the beer out towards her.

Left-handed.

 

 

 

“Kelly,” she says again, and he notices that her edges are blurry.

He swallows several quick mouthfuls of the beer he’s just told himself not to drink and raises his eyebrows in her direction by way of a response.

“Are you okay?” she says, sliding onto a stool and taking a sip of her own beer at the same time all the strength he needs to remain standing seems to evaporate. 

He’s exhausted, utterly. And the desire for _sleep_ is sudden and all-encompassing. 

“I, ah…” He holds a finger up, like he’s trying to find the words. 

No, not _like_.

Because that’s exactly what he’s doing. But they’re gone. Every last one he’s ever learned.

He can feel his jaw working.

Very little else appears to be…

 

 

 

He finally throws a sentence together and makes his escape. 

It feels like the air he’s breathing in is getting stuck in his lungs, making him light headed and breathless. His eyelids have slid closed and dragging them open is a task fast becoming insurmountable.

He’s in the hallway, upstairs somehow, slumped to the floor with his injured shoulder jammed against the wall when she finds him. He has no idea how he got there.

He can’t breathe. And he thinks he might be dying.

She’s in his face, one hand holding his head up, the other waving something tin-foil-like in front of his eyes.

“How many did you take?” she says.

She’s disconcertingly calm.

“I can’t breathe,” he says. He’s not sure it’s the right answer.

 

 

 

She spins him so he’s sitting upright, his back against the wall. She keeps his chin propped up with her thumb as she presses two fingers to the pulse in his neck and asks him again. And again.

“How many did you take, Kelly?”  
“Kelly, are they yours?”  
 _“Kelly… Kelly… Kelly…”_

His eyes slide closed again and she shakes him violently. His fingers spasm and he groans against the fleeting pulse of agony that bursts through. She notices.

She notices everything.

“You need to stay awake,” she says, and she’s a little more on edge this time, which is something, he thinks.

Welcome to my world.

 

 

 

Matt’s on his knees beside him the next time his eyes open. Fingers attached to a hand attached to an arm and a body he can’t see have dragged his eyelids up, and Matt’s right there.

Close enough to touch.

“Casey,” he says.

I really screwed up this time, he thinks.

“Severide,” he hears, gentle, around a sigh. “You fucking idiot.”

And well, he can hardly disagree with that can he?

 

 

 

Shay fills him in on the more intricate details later.

Hallie’s CPR that had cracked his ribs, the intubation that had scratched at his throat. The IVs and the unconsciousness and the fact that he’d almost died.

Only, she doesn’t quite put it all like that.

“Shay, I’m so sorry, you _know_ I never meant-”

But she cuts him off with a raised finger and a seething _stop speaking to me_ that barely makes it to audible.

He figures, it is nothing less than he deserves.

 

 

 

They’ve put his right arm in some sort of sling to relieve the pressure on his neck and shoulder. He guesses all of his cats are out of the bag now.

Ready or not…

 

 

 

And, to be honest, the unexpected _relief_ he feels in the wake of that revelation is almost tangible.


End file.
